Top 40 Willem Dafoe Quotes

Turn off the sound in a movie, and if you can tell what’s going on, the movie should work.

It’s true in the beginning I started playing villains, and I think that’s pretty clear, because if you don’t conventionally look a certain way and you’ve got a certain kind of presence when you’re young, then what’s available to you is character roles, and the best character roles when you’re young tend to be villains.

I do know that I like to play characters that are sometimes a little on the outside – that’s because it feels kind of romantic and sexier to me. I really think they are the people that we learn lessons from.

I don’t have a preference between theatre and film; I like to do both. But I will say that there’s something about theatre that is more nourishing and sustaining than film ever can be.

I set myself challenges every time I work. Ideally, I approach everything as though it’s the first time – with a beginner’s mind and an amateur’s love.

Celebrity is okay as long as you know it’s not about you.

There’s a real wisdom to not saying a thing.

You can be intuitive when you’ve got a more expansive role. You can get into the poetry of telling the story rather than just pushing buttons.

That’s a frustration sometimes, that certain directors that I’d like to work with, they just aren’t doing stories that I’m sort of castable in. Not always, but sometimes I have that frustration.

The Midwest isn’t somewhere you mix with those from the performing arts. But my mum and dad would go off to Chicago every so often to see shows. They would bring back the albums and the movies, those little eight metres, and we would all watch. I think that was when I fell in love with acting.

In my experience, sometimes a movie just hits at the wrong time, gets the wrong press, or gets the wrong representation, and it gets misunderstood.

Film is an editor’s medium. You can create very good raw material and they can make it horrible, or you can do not so well and they can make it beautiful. You don’t really know.

Truth is, generally I like film festivals; somewhere at some level there’s an exchange of ideas.

I wish to Christ I could make up a really great lie. Sometimes, after an interview, I say to myself, ‘Man, you were so honest – can’t you have some fun? Can’t you do some really down and dirty lying?’ But the puritan in me thinks that if I tell a lie, I’ll be punished.

Great theatre is about challenging how we think and encouraging us to fantasize about a world we aspire to.

All the time, as an actor, you want to be asking what’s next and where things are going. If you’re not asking those questions, you’re not growing.

You have to lose yourself to find yourself.

Plenty of bad movies are very successful, and plenty of good movies are not. And distribution is so crazy, some films won’t even get their day in court.

The director’s very important to me, particularly when the director has a recognizable style.

I’ll never be able to really see a film that I’m in.

Film is fragmented and gets into lots of other people’s hands. There are a lot of pleasures that theatre gives me. You get to perform uninterrupted.

I knew very little about ‘Spider-Man’. I grew up more in the ‘Superman’ generation. ‘Spider-Man’ – I didn’t know so much. But it is a really successful franchise, and I’m happy to be involved with it.

Any actor who tells you that he makes choices, absolutely, is wrong. You find work and work finds you.

It makes me laugh when I hear a guy talking about being in touch with his feminine side. But I gravitate towards women; I identify with them. And I do cry very easily, more and more as I get older.

When I was a kid I was very interested in the idea of the will, finding out what you’re capable of. I liked those kind of challenges.

Basically, when I hear the words ‘family drama,’ I run in the opposite direction.

Sometimes I think women are lucky because they can develop in ways men can’t. The old-boy network may be oppressive to women, but it actually stunts men in terms of personal growth.

Action breeds inspiration more than inspiration breeds action.

I’m one of those people who when I go over a bridge, I want to jump. It’s just this intense tickle in the back of my throat. It’s like I’m on the verge the whole time I’m walking over that bridge, and I’m not going to get a release until I jump.

A lot of critics are lazy. They don’t want to look closely and analyze something for what it is. They take a quick first impression and then rush to compare it to something they’ve seen before.

Emotionally men and women are different, but only as a result of the physical differences. It all comes back to our bodies.

In films you do a scene, you play around with it and unless you’re doing a lot of reshooting, which no one has the luxury to do, you deal with the problem for a day and then you move on. On some level, it never allows you to go very deep into what performing is about.

I love Sam Neill. The thing that I always say about him, and I think it’s true, is he’s so dry. When he’s serious, I think he’s joking; when he’s joking, I think he’s serious.

Weirdness is not my game. I’m just a square boy from Wisconsin.

My dad was a surgeon, my mom a nurse, and they were always out working. I had five sisters and a brother. They didn’t care what I got up to.

The English Patient’ is about the coming together of a French-Canadian nurse, an English patient, a Sikh in a turban and me, Caravaggio, and each of us is seeking a resolution to our own problems.

It’s no fun for an actor to keep repeating what you did before. It’s always changing. I’m changing. The target keeps moving. That’s the beauty of it.

I think, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve been able to be more reckless with my choices, because practically speaking, you get less careful. Your choices become more instinctive, and you feel like if you make a mistake, it won’t destroy you.

The bad things about theatre get balanced by the good things in film and vice versa. So to tell you the truth, I love it when I can go back and forth – it feeds different parts of you and exercises different muscles.

One of the pleasures of being an actor is quite simply taking a walk in someone else’s shoes. And when I look at the roles I’ve played, I’m kind of amazed at all the wonderful adventures I’ve had and the different things I’ve learned.